Fat Louies: a tribute

For years, every Monday night, you'd find me and my mates at Fat Louies, throwing down half price drinks during happy hour, playing our own version of pool and getting so pissed off at the jukebox playing bad Asian rap that would waste our money playing the only good songs on there, which happened to all be 80s ballads.

Ah yes. It's my kind of bar. Dingy, pool tables, cheap drinks and not many people around to bother you. Heaven.

Then I found out they did shows. The first one I went along to was In Trenches and Anchors. A great hardcore and punk night. And I got some great pictures.

I didn't realize it was a common thing. But then one night, I got dragged there for some karaoke with the girl's friends. On the way into the booth I noticed a grindcore band playing. Which to me is about 100 million times better than karaoke. So I just sipped my beer and watched the bands instead. A great night was had.

See Fat Louies on weekends transforms into something else. It becomes a venue for great Australian music. Screw the crappy DAL clubs that are full of scene kids that don't give a rats ass about the music (even though the clubs get better international bands) you'll find the real punks, the real hardcore guys, the real music fans of those scenes in Fat Louies most weekends. It's all free and if you don't like the music you can just go around the corner and play some pool. Or around the other corner and make your own music in the karaoke booths.

The best part of these Fat Louies shows is that they feature the best of Australian bands, especially Brisbane bands. If it's an Australian band I've raved about, chances are I've seen them in Fat Louies. It's a great place to find new music, because you don't have to pay anything beyond the drinks you purchase. And they are reasonably priced.

I wish I was getting paid for this, but I'm not. I was just there on Saturday night, after watching my West Coast Eagles win their AFL game, sipping a whiskey and watching Headaches when it dawned on me how awesome Fat Louies is, and how encouraging they are of the music I like.

Check out their facebook for upcoming gigs, or just show up on a Friday or Saturday night. Not too early on the Friday though, their happy hour is becoming quite popular and packed.

Thursday night you can see Waiting Room and Nuclear Summer
Next Thursday you can see Stolen Youth
October 15th the Mercy Beat are playing there

Already, that short list has some of my favourite local bands. Fat Louies, how I love you.

The Grates

1) I'm in love with Patience of the Grates.
2) I love this song so much:
(removed the video because it auto played. Click here instead)

3) Did I mention I'm in love with Patience from the Grates?

She's one of the best performers I've ever seen. She dresses up, dances around to every beat of every song and just looks like she's always having the best time of her life.

Oh she's very cute too.

And writes some great music.

She, and the band she is part of, the Grates, will be playing a bunch of shows in our area to celebrate their new album.

October 27, Spotted Cow, Toowoomba
October 28, the Tivoli
November 17, Coolangatta Hotel
November 18, Kings Beach Tavern

EDIT: Someone should hook me up with a photo pass to this. I'd love to photograph her dance moves. It would be a fun challenge.

Roxette

With the bottom apparently falling out of the live music industry, festivals being cancelled or barely selling, venues half full, it seems promoters are going back to their history books and pulling out the moves that got them started.

And by moves, I mean bands from the past.

The next one to be gracing our shores on a reminscing tour will be Roxette.

If you and your significant other is into 80s music, mix it up on Valentines day next year by rocking out with Roxette at the Entertainment Centre. February 14, 2011.

Future of the Left

I don't ever need a calendar to tell when Christmas is coming up. All I do is listen for a Future of the Left tour announcement. The last two years they've played January 3rd at the Zoo. Maybe they've got some sort of odd daylight savings in Future of the Left-land, because they've just announced they're coming out again but a few days early.

December 6th the Zoo.

If you don't know Future of the Left, you haven't lived. Rising up from the ashes of scuzz/noise/garage rock giants McLusky, they went on the same path, but with a lot of quirkiness. It's music that makes a lot of noise, with a lot of jokes and a lot of unexpected surprises.

The band has had a shakeup, losing a member, gaining a member and having the old bass player from Frank Turner's hardcore band Million Dead slotting in. They've still got the heavy (very much so) and are not afraid of playing a few McLusky songs if you're well behaved.

No matter what kind of music you like (as long as it falls inclusively between metal and indie) you'll probably enjoy this gig. Every time I see them I'm surprised by the great crossover between all of the musical scenes in the crowd, until they rock my socks off and remind me why they're awesome.

Hall and Oates

I wish I owned a yacht, just so I could get away with listening to yacht rock without being looked at weirdly by all of my contemporaries. I just can't help it though, there's something I love about the laid back adult rock. It just always makes me feel good.

And the kings of the yacht-rock world would have to be Daryl Hall and John Oates. You probably don't know them by name, you'll know them by their songs though.

If not, you'd know them from that damn catchy Toyota ad of a few years ago.

To cement their spot as yacht-rock legends, they're playing A Day on the Green at Sirromet winery, like so many of their fellow yacht-rockers. February 5, 2011. Opening for them will be legendary Australian rockers, Icehouse. Who of course wrote one of our few unofficial anthems.

Every Time I Die

Every Time I Die hold a special place in my heart, as they've been the opening act in two of my all time favourite gigs (Norma Jean and Dillinger Escape Plan). Plus, wherever they go, they bring a party. Even in a skate rink.

If you get a chance, chase down their Shit Happens DVDs. These guys not only make some great rock and roll, they have a great bloody time doing it.

They were coming out as part of the Soundwave Revolution, which of course has been sent to the scrap pile of music festival history, but they weren't added into the reorganised festival. Which is just as well as they are now doing their own headlining show: September 23, at the HiFi. Expect a lot of drunken antics and moshing. 18+ of course.

The Man in Black

I have no idea how this escaped my attention, there's so many aspects of it I love.

Number 1: this man:

I have so much of his vinyl. In fact, I have the vinyl from that video. He's probably the reason I got into collecting vinyl, it was the easiest way to get Johnny Cash music.

Number 2: this man. Ignore the cheesiness of the cover, he's a man, just his work with The Cruel Sea and Beasts of Bourbon shall prove it.

So what do the two together make? The Man In Black. From August 31 to September 9 at the 12th Night Theatre Tex Perkins will be performing Johnny Cash's songs as well as telling us the story of one of the greatest musicians ever.

I'm getting Chills just thinking about it.

Counter Revolution

So the fallout of the cancelling of Soundwave Revolution is settling and the details of what's replacing it is emerging.

First off, I got a beautiful email telling me that every cent I spent will be refunded in the next 7 days, including postage and booking fees. A nice touch to dampen the blow. If you haven't got your email yet, or changed banking details since you bought the tickets, get a hold of Oztix.

AJ Maddah, the guy behind all things Soundwave related, has been answering a lot of questions on his twitter. I was keeping an eye on it, but it got out of control. It seems some bands are going out on a mini-festival tour, some are doing their own headlining tour, some our doing club tours and a lot are coming out for Soundwave 2012. It's too much for me to keep track of with my currently busy schedule, but the guys over at AltMusicHub are doing a good job of updating with up to the minute news.

So the big announcement yesterday (which has already gone on sale!) is the Counter Revolution festival! Two stages, no clases and 19 of the bands that were going to be on Soundwave Revolution. These include:

Panic At The Disco
All Time Low
Yellowcard
Story Of The Year
Face To Face
The Damned Things
Set Your Goals
Funeral For A Friend
Hellogoodbye
D.R.U.G.S
The Pretty Reckless
Young Guns
This Providence
Go Radio
Make Do And Mend
Alesana
The Swellers
We Are The In Crowd
Terrible Things

Tickets are ~$103 and it will be at the Riverstage on the same day Soundwave Revolution was going to be (September 24th).

My thoughts? It's basically now a pop-punk festival. Most of these bands I didn't want to see at the original revolution, with the exception of Make Do and Mend and Face to Face (who I've at least seen before twice). So, without the draw of anything major like Van Halen, I probably won't be in attendance. Now I'll just wait for the other announcements to come trickling through...

Free Music Friday 27!

Big thanks to Chris for this one.

Today's Free Music Friday is what I imagine all pop-punk to be. In my head, when I hear the words pop-punk I imagine this kind of music: a bunch of guy's making happy punk music about all things good in life and just having a ball. I don't imagine what gets passed off for pop-punk 98% of the time these days: either whiny teenage heartbreak crap (generally from 30-40 year old songwriters) or weird-ass breakdown not quite crap post-hardcore stuff.

Oh no, the Hotel Year is the damn good kind of pop-punk.

I went to google some pictures, but only got pictures of hotels. And some weird band that dresses like girls and plays weird ass pop-punk that I mentioned I hated above (tokio hotel I think).

Anyway, I'll shut up. You go to Bandcamp and download their album and enjoy the shit out of it. You can donate or there's a mediafire link there for you if you're real cheap.

Free Music Friday 26! (The not for everyone edition)

I stumbled across this band through another blog, which started a review with the words:

This EP, like every good hardcore recording since the beginning of time, starts out with feedback

So yes, I had to get it. But really, it's not for everyone. The band is called Chewed Out, and I couldn't find a picture of them. Here's one of the top Google image search results for them though:
I think that is Steve Jobs punching someone. Yep, no idea.

Anyway, Chewed Out are dirty, grimey hardcore which starts leaning a bit more of the way towards grindcore. If you like bands like Dangers and Departures (which I really freaking do), or even chaotic noisy hardcore bands like The Chariot or Norma Jean, you'll enjoy the shit out of this.

They have a free EP on their Bandcamp. Get it and get moshing in your bedroom/office/wherever you keep your computer.

Website goodness

Hey faithful readers, sorry I've been ignoring you lately. Life's been busy. And you'll start seeing the results soon. With me doing band photography for more than just shits and giggles, I thought it was time to tidy everything up and be a bit more professional.

So to start with, I made a landing page for my photography and life in general. It's the old blog link, aka http://moshpitson.com/. If you've been using this link to come to my blog, you've probably already discovered it by now. It still links here eventually, but to get directly to this Brisbane music blog, go to http://moshpitson.blogspot.com/.

If you like my photography, I've started a small photography blog too. http://moshpitson.com/blog/ This will be used to discuss photos, gear, tips, tricks and whatever other photography things I feel like. It won't be used for just live music photos.

I'll still post the gig reviews and photos on this music blog too.

I still use Tumblr to post small things I like, or just random photos I've done. http://moshpitson.tumblr.com/

My Twitter is more personal these days, but during the work week I'll still post a lot of music things, especially my one sentence album reviews. http://twitter.com/#!/moshpitson

My Flickr will hold the best of my band photos, as my portfolio. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nunchukakatta/sets/72157625075862092/

There's more, but not really music related. It can all be viewed from my moshpitson.com homepage.

Despite all of this other stuff, never fear. I will still be talking about music as much as always. I'm obsessed with it. I can't help myself.

Thanks for reading and following me. I really appreciate it. Don't stop the rock. \m/

The Revolution is over

There's been a mighty lot of internet whining going around right now, purely because the music festival Soundwave Revolution has been cancelled.

This was the festival I was undecided about going to see. On one hand, fucking Van Halen. On the other hand, it was a lot of bands I had either seen before or had no desire to see. And it was too expensive. In the end I bought a ticket, purely for Van Halen and the promise of a new announcement this week with a bunch of other great bands (the rumours of which had me tempted).

Heck, last night I even put in my application for a photo pass. So maybe I jinxed it?

The 2nd announcement kept getting pushed back and back and back and now we know why. The second major headliner, who was supposed to be announced became a no show. And for some reason, this caused the entire festival to be disbanded.

Most of the bands are still coming out for an east coast only run of shows and little festivals. So sorry to Adelaide and Perth, you guys are getting the short end of the stick. I'll keep you all up to date as I find out more.

Here's the radio interview with festival promoter AJ Maddah earlier today.

EDIT: Brisbane related updates from AJ Maddah:

Update 2, thanks to my man Chris:
The Brisbane shows will be 24th to the 27th.

Update 1:


If you can't see the picture, there'll be a 2 stage mini-festival at Riverstage and Alter Bridge will be playing the Tivoli. More to come...

Arctic Monkeys

When I first saw this music video one night quite late on tv, I thought there was a great 1970s garage rock band I had missed out on.

But no, it was just the Arctic Monkeys. And over their few albums, I still haven't lost interest in them. Despite becoming more polished over time, they still release great indie albums with just that little bit of retro-garage rock edge.

Unfortunately, I've never seen them. Which is quite odd. I imagine this is because every tour they've been on has been a festival tour I've boycotted. This could all change in 2012 however, as they're playing the Riverstage on January 14.

Up Late: Surrealism

God bless the Gallery of Modern Art. They always manage to make every exhibition about more than just the art. I love how they bring in bands or movies to go hand in hand with their displays.

And the current surrealism exhibition is no different. Tying in movies is not hard, surrealism can be found in a lot of movies from the 30s (or in 90s indie rock worshipping the surrealist cinema of the 30s). But how do you link surrealism to music without involving a lot of drugs?

That's quite the pickle.

But luckily GoMA solved it. Without bring Pink Floyd back from the dead.

Instead, they got these guys:

That's Akron/Family. They make music which escapes description, but at best sounds like weird-ass-electronic gone blues-folk. I gave their 2011 album, which is simply titled S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT, 4/5. It's good, just trippy and out there.

So it's perfect for surrealism! Catch them at the Gallery of Modern Art September 30.

Review: We Set Sail/City Riots/Get Up Kids, HiFi, August 5th 2011

The photos I took were for AltMusicHub, and you can find the gallery of them over at their Facebook. The following photos are the ones that just didn't make their gallery.

I was nervous as all heck for this gig. It was the first time I've ever had a photo-pass to a real life venue. There was a bit of a mix-up at the door, which scared me even more, as I had already sold my original ticket on to Jacob. Luckily I had printed out all of my confirmation details and I eventually got in with a nice little vinyl sticker to take home as a memento.

At this point We Set Sail were in their third song, so I was able to sneak into the photo pit for a quick couple of pictures in my allotted slot.

They're a local group of boys signed to Hobbledehoy Records and they were damn enjoyable. Featuring Paul (from the store Kill the Music and the band the Paper and the Plane) they seemed to be the perfect opening band for Get Up Kids. Enough of a shoegazey emo sound to be similar, but also a fair bit of punk and distortion to get everyone pumped up.

Even Rob, the roomate who came along only knowing a few Get Up Kids songs, enjoyed the living heck out of them. Do yourself a favour, check them out here, or at the Balance and Composure gig next week.

At this point I thought the crowd was quite sparse. Unforunately, it wasn't going to change much. The HiFi was over half empty, something I hadn't seen since the Comeback Kid tour. A quick survey of everyone around me showed that there was a large number of door spots and competition winners in attendance. A lot more than normal.

The next band didn't do much to help the crowd either.

City Riots, from Adelaide, just really didn't have the sound to go with the rest of the night. They were more of a straight up rock band, and honestly, I feel they would feel at home opening for the Vines or Jet.

But hey, they were quite photogenic and gave me lots of good shots.


But then, it was time for the Get Up Kids. They actually played a great set list, only touching a few songs of their not-so-well-received new album. Unfortunately I was a bit disappointed, and here's why:

1. There was no Reggie. James Dewees, their normal keyboardist (who I'm a massive fan-girl of) is on tour with My Chemical Romance, so he wasn't here. Luckily I saw him at Soundwave a few years back where he did a Cure cover.
2. The sound. The HiFi is generally amazing for their mix on the PA, but this gig was a real let down. Way too bassy.
3. They didn't play Mass Pike or Petty Pretty Things

But if you take away my pettiness there, it was still a good 1.5 hours of classic Get Up Kids. The sparse crowd was obviously hard for the band too, as they made a lot of small talk about how the crowd was hard to read and there was a lot of silence in between songs. I still came away quite happy.

In the photo pit I was competing with about 10 other photographers, so I stood rooted on the one spot for most of the time. And that spot was in front of the bass player, who moved around a lot. He was by far the most energetic and the best person to photo during our 3 songs allocation.



Don't forget, you can view my full photo gallery here.

Not forgotten

Apologies for the lack of blogging lately. It's been a busy few weeks.

This week I finished my Splendour sideshow trip spectacular by going to Sydney to see Noah and the Whale. Oh, and there's a big website redesign that's being finished as we speak too.... See you soon guys.

If you're at the Get Up Kids tomorrow night, say hi to the guy behind the camera. It's me